


Tender Young Gods

by Aurora Cee (SC182)



Series: Mutatis Mutandis [1]
Category: Spartacus Series (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe-Mutant Powers, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Multi, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2017-12-30 05:41:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SC182/pseuds/Aurora%20Cee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...Yet slaves at all corners of the empire whispered of the old gods and the vengeance wrought by those most wronged. Of secrets held back from even the kindest dominus for fears untold. They sang in breathy voices of others who embraced the gifts from the gods to fight those that forgot that they too were human made of flesh and blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Naevia

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Wilde Lager" by Rome. 
> 
> This AU supposes that the Rebels were able to exercise all of their strengths. Some abilities are easily identifiable with various DC, Marvel, and Heroes characters. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters herein.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The elements whispered to her asking how she would deliver her justice._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Naevia's story from War of The Damned and Vengeance.
> 
> Powers of Storm, Mistress of The Elements

Naevia was not the first.

* * *

She lay in the grass beyond the temple wall and prayed to the gods as the clouds passed over her head. She beseeched them for one thing, though she almost felt like the gods had no more favors to grant her and her love. The clouds offered more hope as they slid past white and soft, some merging into facsimiles of her love’s face and gave new life to moments from times long past in wispy detail.

She felt so tired and bursting with dark thoughts, though like the sun, rays of hope cut through the veil around her heart and gave her further hope that she would return to herself.

If the clouds showed her back in his arms, then Naevia would count the vision as blessing.

* * *

The night the map went missing,  she was overwhelmed with such anger. How dare one of their own try to staunch their growing tide of freedom? Naevia felt her anger rising until it sat roiling and howling within her. She looked to the sky and felt wetness upon her cheek. For once, the wetness was not from tears but the heavens mirroring her anger.

Clouds moved across the sky like her spirit, tumultuous and teeming. Crixus, with all his rage, breathed new life into the growing maelstrom at her core as he searched for answers and demanded blood for betrayal.

Naevia’s eyes flashed bright and sudden, and so did the sky.

* * *

Beneath her knees, the rocky earth pierced her flesh and watered the desolate earth with her blood. There were tears in her eyes but not for the pain coursing across her skin and the fire lacing through her bones.  When she looked to Crixus finding him like a lone star in a living sky, she smelled the tears building in his eyes and heard his lessons carried on the winds.  

_It was no simple task to separate a man’s head from his shoulders._

It would be no small task, indeed.

Her knees no longer kissed the hard ground and gave sacrifice; for now, she was rising but not to her feet. During those many long nights when Crixus had held her, he had not known that he was playing anchor to something rising inside her. While her mind might have been lost to the gore and misery of tormenting hands and cruel fate, his heavy arms had settled her and kept her body moored firm to the earth.

She had been so afraid to tell him many things. She’d been afraid that he would let her go and, if he had, she feared that the winds would take her and she would never return.

To gaze upon Crixus now as he struggled to abide her wishes, she realized she yet had him with her. The wetness on her fingertips was not her own but his, stolen from his very eyes.

She closed her eyes when Ashur took hold of her and silenced his words by giving voice to the winds that sang to her in a rising song, demanding to heed her call, and so she bade the wind give her a blade so that she might have her justice.

Then the blade struck Ashur and felled him as Naevia rose to her feet, the wind at her back steading her like a determined sail. The sword that would have taken her life surged into her hand, placed there by her command and her will.

The elements whispered to her asking how she would deliver her justice.

“I would have more than your fucking head. I would have you cleansed from this world.”

Ashur sneered from bloody lips. “You can try,” he howled, pained, though still laughing.

She smiled down at him, equally bloody, as radiant as the sun. Let him play the fool and give cause for her to laugh.  

Naevia raised her sword, tipped to the heavens and painted in the blood of vengeance and she opened her senses to the swirling swell of heat and churned it until her hair rose like a canopy about her face.

She watched the sky darken, suddenly pleased. “And I will,” Naevia promised then bellowed a roar saturated in her blood and tears, and the sky parted. Her sword sliced through the air with the mightiest force of the heavens rolling through her and she did not shutter her eyes as her vision faded to white.

Later, Naevia only knew the sight of scorched earth and the faintest trace of burnt flesh on the air. Her threat to Ashur was a promise delivered.

There was light, some said.

Jupiter’s bolt, others claimed.

Crixus stroked her face with large gentle fingers, staring into her eyes as if he’d never beheld himself there before and combed his fingers through her hair like it was made of the finest silk and caressed strands white like the newly formed clouds.

“My goddess,” he rumbled as he brought her close to his heart.

Naevia breathed into his chest. “It was always I who said I had been loved by a god.”

He took her hands and gave her silent bid to show him her new magnificence. Curls of lightning danced across her skin and he gazed at her with renewed awe. “Then let ourselves be blessed by the heavens.”

She grinned at her love with the purest of feelings and the sky resigned itself to peace.

Then Naevia answered, “And gods we shall be.”


	2. Spartacus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They would rise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spartacus's story from War of The Damned and Vengeance.
> 
> Powers of Superman

Spartacus sat beside Mira’s cooling body heart heavy and lamenting the sorrows of this war. Of all the sacrifices he was forced to make, the bitter question if any had been worth the blood spilled as the toll demanded him answer.

He bowed over her body with his eyes closed and held her still hand, already starting to lose the golden glow of vitality that had been in Mira’s every step. He committed Mira’s beauty, bloodied and still to the small chamber of his heart that he said had been too small for her offered love. It was too small to hold all the love and devotion she had given him and still too small to be an adequate repository for this woman, who if he could be claimed father of the rebellion, had been its mother. Birthing and nurturing it with blood spilled on the steps of the ludus floor.

Mira had been a mighty woman, capable of more than her small frame suggested. He’d seen her bring men and objects low with a flick of her gaze or a wave of her hand. Why, he wondered so anguished, why hadn’t she felled the axe before it could cleave her chest.

His head sank deeper into the cool hand between his palms.

He inhaled her scent, finding just Mira beneath layers of earth and blood. Just Mira. She would always remind him of the sun, hot and fresh, while Sura brought to mind the spice of smoke from a tirelessly stoked fire.

Spartacus closed his eyes and breathed.

The voices of the others faded to nothing as did the cold of the mountaintop across his skin.

He no longer kneeled beside Mira’s body laid to rest on rock and brambles. Now he idled at the foot of the temple restored and gleaming, almost too resplendent for his eyes to behold. Fire spilled from its belly, curving high with fingers clawing at the air and roaring to be heard.

Spartacus was no stranger to the flames, for he knew who was to traverse through them. This vision, he’d witnessed before while awake and in the throes of slumber.

He watched for a shadow pass through the raging depths and waited on bended knee. Through the burning hall emerged, not a single shadow but two, which slid through the wall of flame like silk over skin to stand above him in the center of the steps.

Sura stood before him, clad in a dress composed of blue flame, each tendril curving to embrace her form from her pale shoulders to the creamy length of her legs. Yet it was Mira standing by her side that stole his breath and threatened to undo him. She too wore flames in the design of a finely crafted gown, one long denied her but befitting her beauty; hers burned and popped with arches of the fiercest orange and yellow, just as awesome as the sun’s corona.

Goddesses. Spectres. Furies.

Spartacus knew not but remained bowed in reverence.

Many nights had passed for him with Sura in his thoughts. Nights with visions of her speaking in her steady way: full of promises of blood and sacrifice and debts yet unpaid.  Whispers of changes yet to come, wrought by the strength of his will and the desire of all those who would so willingly follow him.

The pair called him to them, beckoning with palms extended where fires of their respective colors danced to an eternally wild song. Wisdom would have him be afraid of being burned but love had always made him foolish and so took their hands into his own and allowed the heat to course through him.

In their eyes, flames breathed and smiled as they reached for him.

Sura took hold of him first, guiding his gaze to hold the flames in hers. “You must be able to see your enemies,” she spoke and caressed his brow.

Then Mira turned his gaze back to her. “You must hear the hearts and cries of your people,” she said with a glowing grin and caressed his ears. “To harness your rage and your heart is to know an inexhaustible resource that no enemy can plunder.”

They raised his arms which grew hotter and heavier under their touch but obeyed each command with the slightest of influence. “Strength lies in breaking shackle and chain and tethered collar as surely as edifices and the armies hiding behind them.” Sura decreed and let the blue flaming vines curl up the sides of his arms to cocoon him until they sank beneath his skin.

Mira cradled his face in a final caress. “Do not question why the change has come, accept these gifts for what they are and will be for your people.”

There were so many gifts now inside the ones he held closest to heart.

Mira had a grip that had moved many an object unseen.

With Duro’s death, Agron had climbed up from the belly of the ludus in a metal skin painted in bloody streaks.

Crixus could suffer and suffer and need not knife nor blade to defeat a man in his path, just his body.

Nasir moved through shadows and the air, flickering in and out of sight with just a thought.

And Naevia. She was becoming more. She smelled like a summer storms these days, one pregnant with nature’s fiercest of forces.

There would be more, so many more to come to them with their secrets laid bare, all clamoring for one purpose.

When words finally came to be voiced, he didn’t offer his intended laments. No, he held his eyes high and stubborn. “But I do not believe in any gods.”

And Sura smiled again as she had done so often for her man. “And neither do they believe in you, My Husband.”

“Change must occur in all things, Spartacus,” Mira vowed, addressing him by the only name she had ever called him. A false name to his ears but the true title of whom he had become and who he had to be.  “Rise, for the time of kneeling is no more.”                                                                                                                      

Spartacus rose and followed them into the fire.

* * *

When he opened his eyes, he saw the arid peaks and patchy earth on which he kneeled and beheld Mira’s body now long absent life and flame. This was no dream. Portent, it might have been, but the messages meanings yet remained partially hidden.

He administered one final kiss to Mira’s small hand and laid it upon her front and his cloak over her. He heard his people speak in hushed tones that carried like thunder and heartbeats rose more clearly than birdsong to his ears. The strongest cadences belonged to those of gifted heart and mind: Naevia, Crixus, Nasir, Agron, Donar, Saxa, Lugo, Gannicus, Oenomaus and others he had yet to know.

 At the base of the mountain, he saw campfires and the faces sitting about laughing in jest and Glaber’s smug sense of satisfaction. He felt neither the bite of the wind nor the heat of the cooking fires burning behind him. Hunks of rock fell to dust under the flex of his fingers while the air called to his body, issuing grave promises of never kneeling again.

Be this change caused by the gods or his will, Spartacus knew not and cared not.

He accepted the blessings of Sura and Mira and looked to the sky with a promise held to heart.

They would rise.


	3. Children of The Rebellion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How some came to freedom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A take on how these [these two children](http://24.media.tumblr.com/05516f993087f789591777dfc993ecfa/tumblr_mrrnvsDHvk1qzei0uo2_500.jpg) joined the rebellion.

Romans spoke in wary voices that Spartacus and his army were monsters unleashed from the underworld. The haughtiest said these monsters were but creations of soured wine and inhaled spirits fabricated by the Senate to levy more taxes from the purses of the patricians while feeding the childish dreams of the plebians.

Yet slaves at all corners of the empire whispered of the old gods and the vengeance wrought by those most wronged. Of secrets held back from even the kindest dominus for fears untold. They sang in breathy voices of others who embraced the gifts of the gods to fight those that forgot that they too were human made of flesh and blood.

To Spartacus, they rallied by foot, air, or sea. To Spartacus and others like them, they would find a deeper peace. A promise to all seeking a place in this changing new world.

The Senate had forbidden any utterance of his name or the names of those that followed him. Any slaves caught with those cursed names upon their lips were to be punished with permanent silence. To be striped of tongue to mirror their loss of apparent mind. Yet the names persisted out of fear and hope for what their invocation could bring.

With these names on their lips, the pair of children packed. Phaidros and Zenobia, each of less than eight summers, filled the sackcloth given to them by the hunch-backed kitchen woman, Bennu.

“Quiet like the shadows,” she’d instructed when she roused them in the dark. Even in the shadows, she tried to keep them from sight and stood watch over them.

They did as commanded and stopped only when all of their meager possessions were in tow. She clutched their hands in her withered palms and led them through the shadows until they reached the atria where other shadows huddled below the watch of the harvest moon. When a distant bird cooed, they passed through an aperture in the gate in quiet numbers. The last of them the old woman and the two children at her side.

When beyond the gate and well behind the rest, the old woman stopped and looked at the children. “Do you know whom will are to seek?” She asked them.

“Yes,” the girl said.

“Whom do we seek, boy?” she asked, drawing the boy’s gaze from the darkened villa at their backs. “Who is it that we risk our lives to find?”

The boy clutched the sack close to his chest as the old woman’s eyes glowed gold in the dark. Phaidros looked to his sister, who nodded her head stiffly, giving him permission to answer the old kitchen matron’s questions. To speak these names was to be punished, but the old woman wouldn’t punish them for speaking the truth if she’d already risked so much by leading them away.

So he opened his mouth and let the names flow, “The Bringer of Rain. The Undefeated Gaul. The Unconquered Celt. The German…”

There were other names to speak. So many others to join the legend being weaved after every new victory.  “Good,” she said with a sharp smile. A satisfied look that could attest to passing the test laid before them.

The old woman had never been too kind to them, not offering too sharp a word or harsh punishment but cool and distant yet close, much like a hen with her chicks. She had imparted their duties to them and had taught them how to survive in all things. She taught them that names were not the only forbidden things and showed them how to hide that which was most precious.

A soft breeze ruffled the frayed ends of her tattered dress as she slowly straightened her curved back. Her back was big and broad for a woman of her age and so much stronger than her stooped body would tell. In this world, as she’d taught the children, keeping secrets not ready to be discovered and all matters of gifts too precious to belong to the unworthy was a matter of survival.

Her shoulders pulled back and high when she dropped her cloak to the ground. They were alone in the low grass as the others had continued on without them and the villa slept on, remaining unaware of their escape. The children gazed up at her, their eyes growing large and wide like the distant moon at the sight of her.

Bennu stretched herself, finally free and unleashed as she was always meant to be, and allowed her wings to embrace the air. As pitch as night, her wings rose and settled on the shifts of air, feathers spreading and relaxing with each turn of her body.

They had never beheld her in such a way before and knew why she’d kept them tethered in her wake. It was only a matter of simple guess of what she would ask of them now.

Bennu’s wings rose high over her head, standing almost straight against the line of her back. “Shall we finally free ourselves of this cage, Children?”

They shifted their narrow shoulders in their rough-hewn clothes and resettled their sacks in their arms and gazed up at her once more with formerly forbidden wanting, waiting to fall from the edges of their tongues.

“Yes,” they answered with a flap of their tiny wings.

The night shrouded them at all sides, save for the beacon of the moon which stood as the torch they needed to guide them through the sanctuary of darkness.  Then she took their hands in hers and beckoned Phaidros and Zenobia to follow her instructions once more as she flapped her majestic wings.

As they placed themselves firmly between the earth and the heavens, she taught them one last lesson: how make themselves truly free.


	4. Nasir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _...he wore silence and stillness as a truer skin than his flesh._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nasir's story from War of The Damned and Vengeance.
> 
> Powers of The Invisible Girl

Days passed with showers of blood, dirt, and noise. For Nasir, each voice carried the spirit of freedom and the promise of life as he listened. There were so many tongues these days in their camp, but even more faces that he would not fully know intimately by name. Yet Nasir knew the path that had led them to take flight and gamble on their lives but for a chance to breathe and speak unfettered words.

Spartacus had assigned him many tasks, chief among them to be the watcher; the herald for all who came seeking liberty. None spot him as he stood upon high walls or shallow corners to gaze at horizon’s edge or the yawning plains of Rome’s exposed belly.  None noticed him count the incoming numbers or listen to the wistful whispers that were equally swollen with hope and fear and dared to press forward into the unknown.  None saw him walking among their numbers and placing himself against their sides offering a strong shoulder to guide them forward to the gates of camp and steps closer to freedom’s embrace.

When Nasir was alone after he’d seen new brothers and sisters to safe passage or training completed, he stood in the new silence of this world and wondered. How had he survived? How did he still?

In the villa of his dominus, Nasir was awarded the position of body slave, not because he was gentle to the eye and not soft in the head, but because he wore silence and stillness as a truer skin than his flesh. He made himself as Vulcan had crafted Pandora to be as living clay; a thing of flesh and bone but as silent and immoveable as misplaced mortar. His will was that of his masters, just as stone had no force until it was cast; he only moved when given reason.

As Nasir walked through the camp and flitted between the fires and listened to hushed tales of woe and suffering, he tried not to compare his own. Did not think about how his master’s eyes would pass over him and slide to Chadara because Nasir’s silence had willed him not to be there. To those whose suffering he heard, he brought what he could, just little bits of aid and relief to ease the burden of memory and loss.

He had heard tale of those that followed Spartacus most closely were in equal measure blessed and cursed by the gods when still he was a slave. He had seen the way eyes followed Naevia now. Not gazes in awe of her beauty still, her fierceness to rival the furies, or her position as Crixus’s woman. No, they followed her for what she had become—hair as white as spring clouds, eyes blue like harvest skies, and power untold within her very breath. Many thought her to be an emissary from Jupiter or a weather witch. Yet, Nasir had seen her new self for all its terrifying facets—wondrous in peace and raging when unbridled.

His own curse or gift was not so inspiring, though it had served him well. Nasir faded to air, gone from sight at will, leaving no trace to even the most watchful of eyes. None had seen him save two: Spartacus and Mira. The night he had decided to take Spartacus’s life, he now knew his cloaked approach to have been long discovered. He had failed as Mira had alerted Spartacus with a yell and had pinned him against a wall with a wave of her hand while Spartacus had disappeared from his sight only to appear at the end of his nose, clutching him tightly at the throat.

“You would slay those of your kind?” Spartacus had asked with dark disbelieving eyes.

Despite surprise for being caught, Nasir snapped his teeth and snarled like an animal trapped. “I would only slay those that seek to also become my master.”

The fingers at his throat loosen their pressure yet they still caged him like a steel collar, one that was impossible to break. “Then,” Spartacus promised, between clenched teeth, “I would have you learn.”

Crixus had struck him hard, cutting his lip not on the hard knobs of knuckles but the corded tendon and bone that dwelled much closer to the surface and eerily placed.  While Agron had held him in his gaze like Mira with her hand, Nasir felt confined by something heavier and impossible to move.

Spartacus made promises of brotherhood and freedom, each idea settling deeper inside Nasir and willing him to remain and become part of them. Each of these men carried a gift different from his own but gifts nonetheless. When he decided to listen and accept his punishment as it was to be delivered, Nasir willed himself to simply be and left the nothingness of air to become flesh, bone, and blood once more. He’d watched the curious ripple rise beneath Agron’s skin at the end of his display and Nasir wanted to live.

That night, Nasir had not expected to live after being brought before Spartacus and his council nor had he anticipated being trained to wield weapons or to be a weapon.

During the morning’s training, Spartacus had come at him with speed and strength that Nasir would never match, each time felling him into the rough sand. “Even the simplest stone when wielded to be as weapon can bring low the mightiest of opponents. The secret is how it is wielded.”

From Spartacus, Nasir learned that one did not have to be stronger than one’s enemy. He learned to wield the air like a weapon, dancing between points of light and shadow to strike his opponents with sword and spear. This dance had saved his life when a deliberate thrust had been misdirected to an errant slice. He proudly wore his scar, proclaiming him a new member of the brotherhood and wielder of truth and shadows.

So now Nasir protected the camp as only he could, by moving as spirit through the quieting air, listening and watching as spirits were wont to do. He served those in need of being seen and cast those who would not aid their cause to the eternal shadows.  Even in his in-between place, he could not hide—not from Spartacus, who could find the beating of his heart from the stillest of air, nor from Agron, whose love was cast from the same unmalleable steel as his impenetrable skin.

Once, Nasir wished to be like living stone.

Now he could be everything and nothing if he chose.

And he’d never felt more alive.


	5. Agron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _At Agron’s feet, they learned what it was to meet living steel._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agron through War of The Damned
> 
> Powers of Colossus

Agron gritted his teeth, snarling as blood, dirt, and spit flew from his lips like his spirited curses. The traitorous dog, Caesar, and his brutal master hovered above him as they assigned him to nail and cross and waited for the satisfaction of breaking a crucial piece of the rebellion. Since Spartacus had escaped their snares time and time again, he would serve as their sacrifice, and breaking his body and spirit would nourish pangs left by absent victories.

His fellow rebels stood captive spectators in chains with eyes drawn to the terrific spectacle.  All coursing with the same thoughts, not of defeat but a simple question: _how shall this end_?

Agron fought them with muted strength as the soldiers lashed his arms to the boards and tucked his chin to chest to better aim his words like venomous arrows at Caesar, “I will have your fucking head!”

Caesar, the arrogant cunt, grinned and laughed as though he had heard the most genial of jests from one he so dearly called friend. “Bold words for one who will never take up sword again,” his taunt slithered from his grinning mouth.

Agron watched as Caesar affixed the nail to his palm and attempted to free himself, then stopped and waited as the hammer rose, frozen in the air like a serpent waiting to strike its kill.

Crassus absorbed the scene with silent triumph.

Caesar’s grin widened and blossomed as the hammer fell.

The nail crumbled to dust and Agron roared while the rebels laughed.

* * *

They fought now in the snow and ice, breaking through the snare laid by Crassus and facilitated by unforgiving winter winds. Their fate worsened by Naevia’s injury as her control had fled when she slipped from wakefulness.

But all was not lost. In the face of the grappling between Spartacus and Crixius, roaring about like Titans unleashed upon the earth and given arena of snow, ice, and freezing winds, they found their method of escape: they would use their own.

Those that perished would be mortar.

Those that lived, fighters.

Those that were touched by the gods would be unleashed to return the sum of tortuous fortunes upon Crassus’s men.

Through the wall they poured: Spartacus by flight, Crixus by foot, Gannicus as another cold wind, and then Agron. The ground shook as he ran through the hole, breaching it further to allow for his height and shoulders, even wider now to allow more rebels to surgel forth.

Romans with good sense stood back and cowered behind sword and shield. The foolish rushed towards them. At Agron’s feet, they learned what it was to meet living steel. His hands carried sword and shield, each blow carried the force of Vesuvius’s mightiest bellow and shields and swords alike swung at him shattered upon impact. Circles of dark dust ringed the snowy earth that Agron stood upon like tears of metal, wept in grief.

High-hearted soldiers flew to him when their courage allowed and were disarmed and felled, stripped of weapons, and flung back into the snowy drifts. The fortunate died upon receipt of the blow; others lay broken and soon to freeze as the waves of chaos swarmed them and fell upon them with unknown fury.

Towering above the others now carried added advantage. His eyes could track those closest to heart and mark their progress. He spied Nasir, swirling through the icy wind with his staff, striking many Romans. It was a dance Agron could watch ceaselessly. A dance that Agron could sense in his other skin and smiled in the face of its beauty.

Naevia remained high upon the wall, floating in the air with her arms spread and eyes white as the snow blanketing them. She kept the way clear for their people to pass and darkened the path of Crassus with howling winds and sheets of injurious ice, flying like daggers through the air.

Saxa howled an animalistic cry, a wild tongue unknown to him in sound but meaning clear and high and accompanied by the gleam of long, sharp teeth painted in blood.  

He only knew of Gannicus’s progress by the trail of bodies strewn about the snow, all bearing the same look of surprised fear. His movements too quick to be caught by any eye.

Crixus tore through their enemies with his swords of steel and flesh. Each Roman dashed to ribbons.

Spartacus felled them with ice and fire, strength and speed, and the terrible curse of flight for those untouched, who would kiss the earth with their final breath.

Painted redder than a whore’s lips, the snow blossomed with bloody flowers and the ash of steel. More steel would soon follow. The metal called to him now, in the faintest of whispers when entering his reach. He felt the pull nearing his back before it disappeared and Agron whirled about to see a Roman pierced by Castus’s sword and Castus’s face beaming in utter excitement.

This was the first smile that Agron could offer the pirate that was not  barely restraining a snarl of contempt. Castus had never seen Agron in his new form. He was as Batiatus once proclaimed of all his gladiators—a true titan.

What once he’d called curse after Duro’s passing was now infinite blessing. When his skin rippled from flesh to steel, he grew in body from a man of substantial figure and form to that of a giant, standing twice as tall as Spartacus with shoulders as broad as an oxen. His skin gleamed bright like the finest silver and struck with the deadliest of intent. No metal could pierce his flesh now.

So the attempt at saving his life was appreciated but not needed. For Nasir’s sake who Agron sensed watching them with a keen eye, he would accept Castus’s tiding as he was slowly and fearfully (rightfully) inspected from foot to top. Agron acknowledged the save with a small tip of his head then moved off farther ahead, the earth quaking in his wake.

Their people were free from the trap and once more able to see another day out of bondage’s reach. They poured through the wall in greater numbers than would be believed and smiled upon the faces of the ones they called friends and saviors. Yet, the generals stood facing the snowy wall at the edge of the ridge all of similar thought and expected purpose. Crassus would not turn back, not until he truly faced the monsters circling Rome’s door, and each knew that if he dared to meet them, to finally stand before Spartacus, then they would show him what awaited the Romans in darkness or light.

The Romans called them monsters.

Then they would be the monsters of Rome’s designs.

And Agron, Colossus from East of the Rhine, would make their world tremble.


	6. Sura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Her future as she read the flickers sang of pain, suffering, death, and birth of thousands destined for greater purpose._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sura's story from Blood and Sand.
> 
> Powers of the Phoenix.

She tried to sleep in her man’s arms after their escape. How she tried. But the flames called to her, dancing and swaying with pregnant pictures of a time yet to come. Her future as she read the flickers sang of pain, suffering, death, and birth of thousands destined for greater purpose.

Sura heard the ghostly echo of herself proclaim that her husband was destined for great and unfortunate things, and laughed through her tears as the spectre cast its empty eyes upon her. Behind the mask of beautiful Aphrodite, the thrice braided tones of the Fates cackled and cooed and supplied her with true meaning.

Her prayers to the gods of flame and fire would be heard and she would be their emissary—their phoenix forever doomed to burn and set alight all that would dare love her. The great and unfortunate things that her husband must do were only the things that she would cause him to do. The choices to be made and the curses shouted at the gods were as substantial as the weight of air; the threads of fate woven already and spooling in coils long enough to entrap the largest of city walls.  

Her body would die but her spirit alive and unsettled would deliver fated promises through the visions of snakes and fire.

She was life eternal, fire, and vengeance.

Her life given so that her husband would fight and lead.

She would be the unseen wind to drive sword through the heart of dearest friend.  

The spirit to haunt him until rightful path was taken once more.

Her jealousy violent and brutal as Poseidon’s wrath when any tried to find port within his heart and bloody with grief as those same hearts were lost to the cold jaws of great death.

She would whisper on the wind and call for him to open his eyes, to finally allow himself to see his chains and rise above like great Jupiter until all called him king.

She was neither human nor god, but a force, and destined and doomed to be the herald and spark of the rebellion and guide to the underworld of the fallen.

She would cast Roman eyes away from those clinging to the path to freedom and erased the suggestion to turn north to follow.

But this night, secure in the arms of her husband with his true name on her lips, she was a woman still made of tender flesh and singing blood and committed the sound of his heart to mind as the night grew still and the fire blazed. Her eyes closed with memory of the flames and her forever dwelling within them.


	7. Saxa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Saxa, wildling of the Rhine, would be forever free._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Saxa's story from Vengeance to War of The Damned.
> 
> Powers of Vixen.

She was a woman, a warrior, and wearer of many skins.

She was always too big for her skin—a wilding they called her in her village, as savage as a wolf when she fought. When her people were killed she mourned—howled out to the moon like a wolf lost from its pack.

If she could free herself from the chains, she would. Fly from the cage closed by the Romans and, with a thought, she did.

Of so many skins and animals she dreamed and wild songs that set her heart to drumming. Through Agron she once again found a pack, accepted Spartacus as alpha and king, and sang lonesome howls no more.

She was Saxa, wild and free, capable of being all that she wanted.

On the battlefield, she found herself freest as her skin shifted from form to form, savaging all that would stand between her and her kin. To find any of her new kin pinned down was to shift from growing predator forms until only fur and claw were final sight before she feasted on hot blood spouting from Roman flesh.  

When battle was done, Spartacus came to her with Agron, Crixus, Gannicus and Naevia at his back, “Welcome, Sister,” he said, as he descended to the earth. She licked the blood from her muzzle and grinned.

She was a wolf cutting through Romans who invaded their den to return their pack chains.

She was a monster of scales, sweeping tail, and fire upon breath, flying through the air to set the Romans ablaze, snatching them from the earth and swallowing them into her hot belly.

For final battle, she fought in her human skin, having missed the heft and power of steel, and she savored the slice and glide of her weapons. Then blinked and paused. Lost her legs beneath her body as she looked down at the sword plunged low into her exposed belly.  

More Romans fell as she started the brutal task of dying. Her animal spirit whined with each labored breath and scent of rebel souls moving beyond the damned Roman sands. She smiled with sharp teeth and the taste of Romans on her tongue.  Saxa, wildling of the Rhine, would be forever free.


	8. Crixus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crixus' story from Blood and Sands through Vengeance.
> 
> Powers of Wolverine.

His injuries suffered in the mines would place normal men at gates of the underworld. He watched as his faded while once again confined within the cursed walls of the ludus.

Condemned to stand upon the sands of the arena, he was strong and alive—his flesh wholly restored like newly born babe. His spirit fortified with new iron now that his heart had returned.

* * *

Once free and alive, skin rebelled and no scratch, cut, or burn could linger. Fleeting injuries faded as Naevia’s still soft finger grazed his skin with butterfly touches.

She whispered his name, humed his title like a sweet prayer. The Undefeated Gaul. When finally free of the mountaintop capable of making love without cold earth beneath back, he worshipped her, fell to his knees and supplicated the curves of her thighs and belly and proclaimed her his goddess. With stars glowing in her eyes, Naevia, his warrior queen, smiled and anointed him with kisses, for he was a god most deserving.  

* * *

Spartacus’s hits hurt and wound deeper than any from a Roman’s sword. The single body stronger than his own, yet still capable of bleeding despite his array of god-like demonstrations when flesh was struck. They were brothers and as such hurt each other as no one else could.

* * *

On his knees he watched Naevia with tears streaming from her eyes. The blow to her head, rendering her control tenuous. The clouds swirled and darkened the sky but they remained defiant to her call. He smiled with blood on his face, trickling through his teeth to water the earth. He witnessed the rising swell of her fear as it crested over her face for him but continued to feel a blessed peace. He was yet the Undefeated Gaul, so let the Romans have his blood. Let them _try_ to take his head.

His goddess was his final vision before long tunnel of darkness took him to its breast.

* * *

He came awake to the itch of cloth over his face. Choking, he called her name, “Naevia. Naevia…”

The horse’s sway stopped and sunlight greeted him as she opened the sack with tremulous fingers. He smiled at her and she grinned back through her tears, the sun parting the skies at her gladness. She brought his head to Spartacus who led personal mission to retrieve his body. Then slow days passed as his head committed to new union with his body.

The night the rebels sparked a pyre with intention of blinding Rome with its majesty, his name rose like thunder across the night and was braced by the names of the fallen. His undefeated laughter echoed across the valley until dawn.

* * *

When the sounds of battle were but small sounds of shuffling feet and dragging metal, he waded through the field of bodies for the cold vessels of his kin and friends. If not too long cold, then Saxa’s woman who return them to new life and warm breath. Spartacus would not wake, finally gone to Sura’s arms, and given final blessing by the heavenly rains.

Their war was over, to be forever painted in rivers of blood and preserved in legends of a hundred tongues. He was Crixus, the Undefeated Gaul and alive; always a new god with his goddess watching over the earth and skies while the dust of Rome slid beneath foot and crumbled in their wake.  


End file.
